Tuesday, December 24, 2013

“God sent His Son born of a woman to
enable us to be adopted as sons” – can we ever grasp the depth of this mystery
which we celebrate tonight? Eternity will not be long enough to plumb its
depths.

I would like to reflect a little on
Mary’s role in this mystery of the Incarnation of the Eternal Word of God.“She is the one who opened her heart to faith
and her bosom to her Maker” as we read in St Bernard during the week.She put her young life at the disposal of her
Creator – and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.But Mary’s role did not end there – she
continued to ponder the Word in her heart and accompanied her Son to the foot
of the Cross where she received another mission from His dying lips: “Mother,
behold your son!” Yes Mary is to continue to bring forth Christ in all those
entrusted to her until the end of time.

St
Paul wrote to the Galatians: “My children, I am going through the pain of
giving birth to you all over again, until Christ is formed in you – how I wish
I could be there with you at this moment and find the right way of talking to
you.” (Gal 4:19).How these words can be applied to Mary – our
gentle mother who longs to see Christ coming to birth in each of her
children.But like her Son she will not
force herself on us – she waits patiently for our free response.She knows from her own experience how
powerful a free response to God’s invitation is.

We may ask ourselves what this
invitation may be?At the foot of the
Cross Mary heard those other words: “I thirst.”Jesus thirsts for our love; He thirsts to be born again in each of our
hearts and lives this Christmas. He thirsts that we can hear His word of love
in the silence of our hearts; that we recognise Him in whatever guise He
presents Himself at each moment of the day.He thirsts that we believe in His love for each of us just as we are,
even when we feel unworthy.A few years
before her death Mother Teresa of Calcutta wrote to her sisters and perhaps her
words can speak to us again tonight: “Because Mary was there on Calvary she
knows how real, how deep is Jesus’ longing for each of us.Ask her to teach you …her role is to bring us face to face with the
love in the Heart of Jesus Crucified. Hear
her pleading: ‘Listen to Jesus’ thirst’ - let it be for each of us a Word of
Life.” In our second reading tonight St
Paul tells us that Christ “sacrificed himself for us
in order to set us free and purify a people who would be his very own and have
no ambition except to do good.” (Titus
2:14).Yes Jesus thirsts
for us to be his very own, He thirsts for our love, He thirsts that we believe
in His personal love for each of us.

As the Word was formed in Mary’s
womb through the power of the Holy Spirit, we are now invited to rest in her
womb and by the power of the Holy Spirit be transformed there ever more
perfectly into the image of Christ.By
remaining close to Mary we allow her to accomplish her mission in us by allowing
her to form us into other Christs, into great saints, as sons in the Son, beloved
of the Father.

‘At the heart of this mystery is the
paradox that the glorious God decided to manifest Himself in the helplessness
of a child who is overlooked by adult society and comes to the world in a
stable.

The powerlessness of a child has become the proper
expression of God’s all subduing power, for the only force He employs is the
silent force of truth and love.It was
in the defenceless weakness of a child that God wanted us to have our first
encounter with saving mercy.How
comforting it is to see the peaceful tranquillity of God and thus to experience
the security emanating from a power that in the end will be stronger than any
other force and will outlast the loud triumphal cries of the world’.

Our mother, Mary, in her generous and humble response
to God’s invitation to participate in thismystery of the Incarnation teaches us ‘that only with Christ has
authentic joy made its appearance and the only thing of ultimate importance in
our lives is to learn to see and know Christ, the God of grace, the light and
joy of the world’.

Sunday, December 22, 2013

In our way of thinking, kings inspire awe and wonder,
surrounded as they are by wealth; lacking nothing; held to be gracious when they
condescend to smile at us or speak to us; so far out of reach and outside our
reality as to be unapproachable, untouchable, altogether alien from the little
moments that fill our days and shape our lives.Kings have need of nothing because they have more than one ... or two …
or three of everything: cars, planes, palaces, lands. …

Today, as we draw nearer to that day of Incarnation,
without which there could never have been a Resurrection – we are reminded that
Jesus
is our King, our Desire, our Cornerstone, our Unity – making out
of such an array of diversity, one-ness; and we call
on Him who formed us from the dust of the earth, to save us.

How do you approach a
King?

Who can tell me how to draw near to my King: He whom I
desire?

Who can reassure me that my littleness and
worthlessness: all my sins and failings – all those moments that cast shadow
rather than radiate light – who will convince me that these are not obstacles
which make my desire unattainable?

He will.

In the people He sets before us – Zechariah, Elizabeth,
John the Baptist, Joseph and Mary – He shows me that poverty and littleness are
in fact helps, because if I know I have and am nothing, I can see more
clearly.He is my cornerstone, the
foundation of my life – He is a king, yet what a King!Without wealth or possessions, and welcomed
into the world with only pure love, I learn that I need not approach Him ... He
it is who does the approaching … not I.

Zechariah, Elizabeth, John the Baptist, Joseph, Mary …
they did not worry about how to approach their King:He came to them and they had only to overcome
their fear, doubt and even unbelief … and make Him welcome … and so they
did.

Saturday, December 21, 2013

In today's antiphon we greet Christ as the "Rising Sun" and "sun of justice"; the one who comes to guide and enlighten us. This links in with Malachi's prophecy "for you who fear my name the sun of righteousness will rise with healing in its wings" (Mal 4:2). This message that Christ is the one who enlightens and heals us is particularly important in the darkness of the world today - a world of seemingly unending violence and war, a world where many people can see no way out of financial problems, sickness or addictions.

In response to this Jesus himself gives us a message of hope: "I have come as light into the world that whoever believes in me will not remain in darkness" (Jn 12:46). It is not that Jesus promises to get rid of all the difficulties and hardships, but he is with us to give us the light and strength we need to walk through them and not stumble or have our way blocked in darkness.

Friday, December 20, 2013

O Key of David and sceptre of Israel, what
you open no one else can close again; what you close no one can open.O come to lead the captive from prison; free
those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death.

Today we address our awaited Messiah
as ‘Key of David’ and our antiphon paints a graphic picture of Him as a leader
who unlocks prisons and leads the captives to freedom.Our first thoughts may turn to all those who
are in prisons throughout our world; those who are slaves to addictions and
violence; to those areas where there is war and unjust governments – the list
is endless.

While keeping all these in mind I
was drawn to reflect on the meaning of true freedom and what it means for each
of us in our daily lives. Freedom is a
theme which is dear to human beings from the beginning and which we find woven
into the pages of both Old and New Testaments. Israel was formed as a people
when Moses led a group of nomadic slaves through the desert towards the
promised land of freedom – a symbol of our Baptism where Jesus our true leader
leads us from the darkness of sin to the liberty of the children of God as St
Paul reminds us: “He has delivered us from the dominion of darkness and transferred
us to the kingdom of his Beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the
forgiveness of sins.” (Col 1:13–14).

Whether we are aware of it or not,
we are all in search of liberation, always in search of inner balance and
unity.Unfortunately we seek it in the
wrong places and our modern world would have us believe that it means being
able to do what we want irrespective of the consequences for others.We forget that Jesus has already freed us
from sin and has set us on the road to true freedom.As He tells us:

"If you make my word your
home

you will indeed by my
disciples;

you will come to know
the truth

and the truth will set
you free.” (Jn 8:31)

Mary is the one par excellence who
made His word her home and in this morning’s Gospel we see her freely placing
her young life in the hands of her God to do with as He pleased not knowing
that it would lead her to the foot of the Cross and beyond. What an example of
faith and courage!Jesus leads us too on
a journey of faith which begins with our Baptism and continues until He calls us
to Himself.It is a journey leading us
from the prison of our own selfishness to the freedom of loving as He loves –
to the point of laying aside all personal preferences so as to bring life to
others that they too may experience the freedom of love.Faith awakens our freedom from within –
because God does not force our wills – rather He stands at the door of our
hearts and knocks, waiting for our response.He is always inviting us beyond our present horizons of selfishness and
promising us a “land flowing with milk and honey” which is nothing less than
Himself for He can only give Himself. We only become free when we do good
because we love the good.

Jesus brings us to freedom through
the forgiveness of sins in the sacrament of reconciliation – he unbinds us and
lets us go free as when he raised Lazarus from the dead.Yet He freely allowed himself to be bound in
swaddling clothes in the manger and wrapped in the shroud in the tomb.He is not God from afar but chose to be one
of us so much so that our wounds are forever engraved on His hands and he
invites us to ‘go and do likewise’ (cf Lk 10:37).

The road to true freedom is long and
hard and is never complete till we meet our Saviour face to face but our faith
assures us that Jesus walks with us and is Himself the key which unlocks the
hidden wisdom of our God who is always at work in the great and small events of
our lives leading us from the slavery of sin and selfishness to the true liberty
of the sons of God.

O Key of David and sceptre of Israel,
what you open no one else can close again; what you close no one can open.O come to lead the captive from prison; free
those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death.

Thursday, December 19, 2013

On the 17th we heard 'O Wisdom ,you came forth from the mouth of the Most High’. That we can all readily believe, that is right and fitting. But that this Word of God should take flesh in Mary, should actually be of our stock, be of the stock of Jesse that is what the Church calls on us to reflect about today. Yes, Eternal Wisdom proceeds from the mouth of the Most High, but he proceeds also from the bodies of several generations of human beings. He becomes like us in every way except He is without sin. And lest we be tempted to forget that, even on Christmas Night His ancestry is recalled. Many find the solemn singing of the Genealogy tedious and boring but it contains a message of great hope for us, great reassurance, great comfort. Jesus is not afraid or ashamed of his past. No one need be omitted from it ,even those men and women whose lives were somewhat unsavoury if not down right evil, they all went into the forming of his flesh and because of that it is possible for them to partake in His Divinity. In His body He was put to death and through that body He opens up the way to life for us. If He was prepared to come into a world like that , then we can be confident that He is prepared to come to our world, our hearts, with all their accumulated weight of sin. We can be confident that He will come to us as we are, with all our history. Everything that has gone into making us who we are at this moment, everything that contributes to our realization that we are in need of a Saviour is a cause of rejoicing and we can unashamedly recount it because it highlights the graciousness of God in coming to deliver his people.

We worry and fret about our world which seems to be fast moving towards its own destruction but perhaps we need to be people of hope, people who look with different eyes, people who dwell with God’s Word and look at things with God’s eyes. Perhaps more than ever before our world is actually ready for the Saviour, precisely because it is in most need of Him. There is an extraordinary restlessness in our world, nothing satisfies. The more people have the more they realise that this is not what they are looking for. Their hearts ache for they know not what. But we know, we know that their restless longings are genuine, their sense of in completeness is real and that it is only God who will make them whole. So instead of being despondent as we look around us, let us get excited about the opportunity that is ours.. Wherever any individual is at, at this moment, that is the manger in which Jesus wishes to be born, that is the manger in which it is possible for Jesus to be born.

If our lives are hidden with Christ in God ,if we are rooted in Him, then we will produce new growth, we will blossom and others will be attracted by our beauty. It is in and through us that Jesus now enters our world. It is our acceptance of our world as it is, our ability to see that it is not beyond Redemption, that will make redemption possible. Let us enter into the heart of Jesus that through us Jesus may enter into the heart of our world.

Wednesday, December 18, 2013

O Adonai and Leader of Israel, you appeared to Moses in a burning bush

and you gave him the Law on Sinai.

O come and save us with your mighty power.

“The mystery of the Incarnation and the sheer wonder
of the Christian proclamation of truth is that Christ shares His experience
with each one of us. And he actively invites each one of us to enter into His
own experience of the Father..He
invites us not just to make some sort of intellectual assent. he invites us to share,
to share with his experience in all its fullness, to share and to be carried
away by the infinite thrust of his energy, as He knows the Father and loves the
Father, and as He, in his turn, is known and loved infinitely.

And this is what
we are all called to” – (The Way of Unknowing byJohn Main)

We are invitedto enter the eternal moment of God’s self-communication in Jesus.

“O Adonai” is the Hebrew
word for “Lord”.God has a personal name
in the Bible, but it was considered too
holy for normal use, so when the Reader at public worship in the Synagogue
found the holy name in the text, he read the word ‘Adonai’ or ‘Lord’ instead.

God’s appearance to Moses in
the burning bush is associated with the sacred name indicated by“Adonai” and God’s self description as “I AM
WHO I AM”.The names “Lord” and “I am”
indicate that God is both known to us and isbeyond our knowledge.He gives us
his name,yet this name directs our
attention to God as he is in himself, rather than any ideas we may have of him.

The burning bush is an
appropriate symbol of the God who goes before us to lead us, but is beyond our
grasp and not in our power.When he
heard God speak from the bush, “Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look
at God” (Ex.36).The last antiphon “O Emmanuel”, speaks of God
who is intimate and close to us, but the full glory of this fact is missed if
we forget the immense distancebetween sinful man and God most holy,
which only God himself can bridge.

In
making man in his image and likeness, God “crowned him with glory and honour”,
but by sinning, man fell short of the glory of God.From that time on, God was to manifest his
holiness by revealing and giving his name, in order to restore man to the image
of his Creator. (CCC 2809)

From
the Covenant of Sinai onwards, this people is “his own”anda
“holy”consecrated nation, because the
name of God dwells in it.

The
law which was given on Sinai is not on its own, but is part of the revelation
of God’s love, his Will for us his children, as forgiven sinners in communion
with him.Before God gave his people the
ten commandments, he freed them from their chains.God’s Grace comes before our obedience and
makes obedience a matter for joyful gratitude.

Finally, in Jesus the name
of God is revealed and given to us, in the flesh, as Saviour, revealed by what
he is, by his word and by his sacrifice.This is the heart of his priestly prayer: “Holy Father, for their sake I
consecrate myself, that they also may be consecrated in truth”. (Jn.17:11,19)Because he sanctifies his own name, Jesus
reveals to us the name of the Father ‘I have made your name known to them and
will continue to make it known’ (1 Jn.17.6)At the end of Christ’s Passover, the Father
gives him the name that is above all names: Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory
of God the Father”. (Phil. 2.9-11)(CCC 2812).

Tuesday, December 17, 2013

From the 17th to the 23rd December each evening at Vespers we sing the great 'O Antiphons' before and after the Magnificat. We would like to share with readers of this blog the various reflections on these antiphons prepared by sisters:

17th December O Sapientia - O Wisdom

O
Sapientia, quae ex ore Altissimiprodiisti,

attingens
a fine usque ad finemfortiter,

suaviterquedisponensOmnia:

veni
ad docendumnosviamprudentiae.

O Wisdom, you come forth from the mouth of the Most
High.You fill the universe and hold all
things together in a strong yet gentle manner.O come to teach us the way of
prudence.

The liturgical texts from today invite me to thank God
for His wonderful deeds, for the creation of the world and for the whole history
of redemption, which is penetrated with His Wisdom.

St Matthew in the Gospel shows us a long and complicated
genealogy with many people, men and women.Each name hides a life story.At
the conclusion of it is the birth of Jesus.

I sometimes ask, like St John the Baptist, when I am surrounded be
shadow and darkness; unanswered questions; by situations without
solutions:

Does God know about
me?

Are you the
Messiah?

Are you the One who is to
come or are we to expect someone else?(Mt 11:3)

I cannot see the miracles that are happening.But Jesus tells me: ‘The blind see again and
the lame walk …’ It is the time of
salvation.

The Church teaches:God guides the world and my life in a
mysterious way.He guides everything
along paths that only He knows, leading it to its perfection.At no point in time does something that He
has created fall out of His hands.

God influences both the great events of history and also
the little events of our personal life, without reducing our freedom and making
us mere marionettes in His eternal plans.‘In God we live and move and have our being’ (Acts 17:28).God is in everything we meet, in all the
changes in our life, even in the painful events and the seemingly meaningless
coincidences.God wants to write
straight even with the crooked lines of our life.What He takes away from us and what He gives
us; the ways in which He strengthens us and the ways in which He tests us – all
these are arrangements and signs of His will.

St Teresa Benedicta of the
Cross (1891 – 1942) Edith Stein said:

“What
did not lie in my plan lay in God’s plan.And the more often something like this

happens to me, the livelier becomes the conviction of my
faith that – from God’s

perspective – nothing is accidental.”

I entrust all of us, and myself, into the hands of
Divine Providence and pray for prudence to recognise what is right in every
moment of daily life so that Jesus may be born!

Sunday, December 15, 2013

The day when we celebrate the birth of Jesus over two
thousand years ago, is drawing very close. The Church’s Advent Liturgy is
unbelievably rich in helping us to reflect and pray on this unfathomable mystery
of God’s stupendous gift to us of His only begotten Son.

In today’s Gospel from St. Matthew, we read: ‘John the
Baptist in hisprison heard what Jesus was doing’. St. Matthew says ‘his prison’ not just ‘prison’.This leads us to reflect on how all of us can
be in some kind of prison at one time or another in our lives – the prison of
fear, of insecurity, selfishness, depression, pride, prejudice, illness,
unbelief, poor self image – the list is endless.Whatever it may be, we too, like John the
Baptist, can hear in the Gospels, what Jesus said and did, and of course, we
hear him in the teaching of the Church.

A few weeks ago Pope Francis in his Angelus message to
thousands of people in St. Peter’s Square said: ‘I would like all of you to
consider a medicine,” at this point he raised a little box for the crowds to
see.The Pope continued: ‘It is a
special medicine to make the fruit of the Year of Faith more concrete’-and I’m
sure we could add to the Pope’s words of encouragement -, to make our whole life more fruitfulwhen we are healed of what it is that
imprisons us -

‘Take it!’ said
the Pope,It’s a Rosary which one can
pray also the chaplet of Divine Mercy, spiritual help for our souls and for
spreading love, forgiveness and brotherhood everywhere’.‘Don’t forget to take it,’ he repeated,
‘because it does good.It does good for
the heart, for the soul, for all of life’.And earlier on, the Pope had emphasised the need for faith and trust in
God in the face of life’s difficulties –‘Come to me, all you who labour and are
overburdened’ Jesus invites us in the Gospel.

In all life’s difficulties, we can be certain that
Pope Francis would have great compassion and a desire for the healing of all
who suffer from interior imprisonment of whatever kind, when handing out his
special medicine.The little box also
contained a leafletwith all the
necessary explanations and prayers on it -and a final assurance (as we find in many medicines) ‘this medicine has
never been known to cause any harm!’

Our Advent journey, and indeed the spiritual journey
of our whole life, is not any isolated selfish seeking of personal holiness –
quite the contrary.Into this journey,
fortified by our spiritual medicine, we bring the whole of humanity, pleading
for their salvation, the whole purpose for which God sent His Son into the
world (the purpose too of course, for which St. Dominicwas inspired to found his Order).

May our prayer during the remainder of
this Advent be one, especially, of listening and of fostering a spirit of
awareness of the Presence of God in our lives; and of living, with the help of
his ever present Grace, the sacrament of the present moment , in our daily
lives.Let us

remember that the healing of the Sacrament of Penance
and the food of Jesus Himself in the Holy Eucharist and in his Word, will be
for us all, a vital help in our many sufferings and weaknesses – it is at times
hard to believe, but God really and truly doesthirst forour love – ‘I have loved you
with an everlasting love, I have called you,
for you are mine’ we read in holy
Scripture,What joy, what peace, what
healing this brings us.

Let us then, once again, invite him to come to us and
to all peoples – ‘Come, Lord Jesus, do not delay’.

Don’t forget to take the medicine’ Pope Francis
repeated to the crowds ‘ because it does good!’

Sunday, December 8, 2013

While reflecting on this Sunday’s Readings I was
attracted towards the First Reading from Isaiah- towards the peace and harmony
portrayed and established between animals, nature and in this instance little
children –to quote some lines;

The wolf lives with the lamb

…with a little boy to lead
them.

The cow and the bear make
friends.

The infant plays over the
cobra’s hole;

into the viper’s lair

the young child puts his hand.

And then the following beautiful words bring us consolation
and hope in the midst of our war torn, violent and suffering world:

They do no hurt, no harm,

on all my holy mountain,

for the country is filled with
the knowledge of the Lord

as the waters swell the sea.

If only this were the present reality! Yet, Advent is
the season of hope and we are called to keep this hope alive. These beautiful
words of Isaiah paint a panorama of the harmony that reigned at the dawn of
creation, only to be broken by sin andthey also describe the messianic peace that will come about with the
coming of the Messiah- of Jesus, our Saviour. John the Baptist asks us to
prepare his way by seeking a change of heart – by repentance.

What struck me especially in this passage from the Old
Testament were the three references to children – the little boy, the infant
and the young child- children not adults were part of these scenes of peace and
harmony. In connecting this to the
repentance and change of heart
recommended in the Gospel I was reminded of Jesus’ saying in Matthew 18:3 “
Unless you turn ( or have a change of heart) and become like little children,
you will never enter the kingdom of heaven”. Or the passage in Luke ( 9:46-48)when
an argument started between the disciples about which of them was the greatest
and Jesus taking a little child, setting him by his side and saying anyone who
welcomes this little child in my name, welcomes me; and anyone who welcomes me,
welcomes the one who sent me. For the least among you all is the one who is the
greatest.

What is this saying to me, to us? What can I learn
from this? What are some of the
attributes of little children that Jesus had in mind? Would it be perhaps that
little children are free because they are not locked in an ivory tower of
worldly wisdom? They are free because they are open to receive. Karl Rahner
notes that to think in terms of spiritual childhood, as Therese of Lisieux did
when she proposed her Little Way, suggests openness – an openness to becoming
true disciples of Jesus Christ.

Little children show they are free also by the way
they live in the present moment, open to all and everyone around them: without
trepidation in regard to the binding forces of the past or in a restricting
fear of the future. I noticed that that passage is written in the present tense,
even though it can also be interpreted for past and future events. Are we not
all called to live in the present moment with full awareness of God’s presence both
within and around us.

We could all gain so much if only we followed the way
of childlike simplicity advocated by Jesus, the way of humility and trust that
He himself modelled – daring to become the one the Lord calls each one of us to
be; a vulnerable little child, one who both dares to show love and to allow
one’s self to be loved, as only a little child knows how.

Then with all our defences down we can be sure of
God’s favour, as in the words of this Sunday’s psalm;

He, (God) shall save the poor
when they cry

and the needy who are
helpless.

He will have pity on the weak

and save the lives of the
poor.

Lord, teach us all the way of spiritual childhood in
simplicity, trust and humility of heart. When we are tempted to want to be in
control teach us to realise that we are truly being held by you and cared for,
by you. May we always find our true security in you.

Saturday, December 7, 2013

On Thursday morning, 5th December, we had a most delightful visit from the Master of the Order, Frere Bruno Cadore OP - he was accompanied by Fr Dominic Izzo OP and Fr Gerard Dunne, the vicar of the Master for our Monastery. Fr Bruno and Fr Dominic are on visitation of the Irish Dominican Province at present.

For two hours he answered our questions and provided us with first hand news of the Dominican Order around the world.

Before leaving us we prayed together and Fr Bruno gave us his blessing

Our friends Michael and Bernadette (Lay Dominicans) and Mary helped at the reception and at the Eucharistic Adoration so that our community could be undisturbed during the visit - they were happy to have a photo taken with the Master.

Tuesday, December 3, 2013

As part of the ongoing effort of the vocations promoters of the Dominican Family in Ireland (friars, sisters, contemplative nuns and lay) to promote a greater awareness of the Dominican charism, we have published a Dominican Family Calendar for 2014 - which is available in our Monastery and at Dominican priories throughout Ireland.

In January 2011 a prayer initiative was launched to encourage prayer for Dominican vocations to all branches of the Order. The focus of this prayer initiative is an icon of Saint Dominic (show above on the front cover of the Calendar) which has been specially commissioned for this purpose. The launch took place in the monastery of the Dominican Nuns, Drogheda and since then this icon has journeyed to various Dominican centres throughout Ireland - each centre takes responsibility for intensive prayer for a period of 4 to 6 weeks. It is hoped that the image of the founder of the Dominican Order will draw people to reflect on his life and legacy and in turn, through his intercession, draw more men and women to follow the Lord in the Dominican way.

Sunday, December 1, 2013

The Mass readings for this first
Sunday of Advent provide us with a wake-up call: St Paul tells us “you must wake up now” and
in the Gospel Jesus tells us to “stay awake!” while the Prophet Isaias invites
us to “walk in the light of the Lord.” So as we begin a new Church year we are
invited to come into the light – to remove the blinds from the windows of our
hearts and to let the light shine in – remembering that the true Light is Jesus
Himself.He is the True Light shining on
us and who desires to penetrate and posses our inmost being.

The struggle between light and
darkness is a perennial one - it is the struggle in which we are all engaged –
the struggle to keep our hearts free and not to allow ourselves to be enslaved
by false attractions – the struggle to keep our hearts free for God alone. It is the struggle about which Paul speaks in
the letter to the Romans: “no drunken orgies, no promiscuity or licentiousness
and no wrangling or jealousy.” And he advises us: “Let your armour be the Lord
Jesus Christ; forget about satisfying your bodies with all their cravings.” Today
there is a lot of darkness in the world around us - at times it would seem that
the powers of darkness are let loose but we know that the light will eventually
triumph.More than ever before it is
necessary for us to “give up all the things we prefer to do under cover of the
dark and arm ourselves and appear in the light.” We must let nothing enslave us
or captivate our hearts or impede God’s light and love from shining through our
lives to a needy world. We all know how
easily we can be enslaved by trifles – holding on to mere nothings.

We remember how Augustine’s life was
transformed while reading this passage from the letter to the Romans: After
years of struggle and resistance, in one instant he was free to break loose of
his past and come into the light – or rather to allow the light to penetrate
and show up the darkness.All his fears
fade away and now he is free to let the light shine in – reminding us of what Paul
wrote to the Ephesians: “for once you were darkness, but now you are
light in the Lord; ..Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but
instead expose them…..when anything is exposed by the light it becomes visible,
for anything that becomes visible is light. Therefore it is said,

“Awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead,

and Christ shall give you light.”

Just as in the case of Augustine,
all our yesterdays lead us to the NOW of today and NOW is always new and
different and must mean letting go of whatever hinders us from surrendering to
the God who is lovingly awaiting our response.Can we use these days of Advent to relax in the light of His presence
and ask Him to draw back the blinds of our hearts and open our eyes and ears to
His love streaming into our hearts?The
following quote from Jean Corbon’s book Path
to Freedom seems apt:

“Our ultimate
liberation is to open ourselves to a new presence, and the peak of our activity
is to relax in the gratuitousness of receiving.The more He frees us the more He gives Himself.His gift is a presence of light.Our task is to open the blinds of our prison
and let in the rays of His light.”

May this light stream into our
hearts this Advent enlightening “the eyes of our hearts, that we may know what
is the hope to which He has called us”and
appreciate more deeply what He has already accomplished in us through Baptism –
the sacrament of enlightenment - so that a ceaseless hymn of thanksgiving will
spring forth from our hearts to “declare the wonderful deeds of Him who called
us out of darkness into His marvellous light.”

I finish with this beautiful prayer of St
Columbanus:

“Would that my lamp
might ever burn by night in the temple of my Lord, that to all entering the
house of my God it might give light. …Lord, grant me that love which knows no
fall, so that my lamp may feel the kindling touch and know no quenching, may
burn for me and for others may give light.Do you, Christ, deign to kindle our lamps, that they may shine
continually in your temple and receive perpetual light from you the light
perpetual, so that our darkness may be enlightened and the world’s darkness may
be driven from us.”

Vocation Weekends

Whom do you seek?

We seek God, Who alone gives meaning to our lives. Communion with Christ and with one another in love, through a life of prayer centred on Jesus, the Word of God and on the Eucharist, is the focus of our community life.

Single young women attracted to this way of life are welcome to contact us and we will arrange for a visit or some days in our retreat house - either at weekend or during the week. If a few are interested at same time, and if agreeable to all, we can also arrange for a group to spend a few days together.